Hurricane Harvey

[Hans627]

Just thinking about all those affected by this mega storm. Hopefully there will be no loss of life and those with an AS, or other means, will be able to travel to safer (higher) ground!

[AWCHIEF]

I am located to the east of the storm. I have my trailer semi loaded and almost ready to go in case the storm changes its track to my direction. I can be loaded and on the road within an hour. I am done with riding out hurricanes.

[SteveSueMac]

Get out now Chief! Good luck!!

[overlander63]

The storm was just upgraded to a category 4. I think anybody on the fence about leaving should exercise the better part of valor now.

[OTRA15]

Michael you have probably seen the forecast that Harvey may back up and head east in a couple of days? If you wait to leave until the threat is more real in a couple of days, the campgrounds north of you will probably be full already IMO.

More a matter of timing the limited supply of sites, perhaps.

Good luck to all.

Peter

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by overlander63

The storm was just upgraded to a category 4. I think anybody on the fence about leaving should exercise the better part of valor now.

If it's a Cat4, anyone who hasn't gotten out of the path of the eye already should stay put. I wouldn't want to be on the road with 125mph winds bearing down on me! Though presumably those areas were under mandatory evacuation orders and have already been depopulated of anyone except Darwin Award nominees.

My opinion, as a veteran of 36 years of Gulf Coast tropical storms, is that if you wait until the sustained winds in your area hit 40mph and rising, you've waited too long and the decision is out of your hands. At that point, if you leave at all, leave the Airstream behind because you're more at risk trying to save it than it is at risk just sitting there. Lives are more important than even an Airstream.

[AWCHIEF]

Originally Posted by SteveSueMac

Get out now Chief! Good luck!!

No reason to panic.

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by AWCHIEF

No reason to panic.

I'm with you on this one.

I'm west of you, and barring a drastic shift, I'm looking at 4-6 inches of rain based on the present forecast, and strong gusty winds of gale force or less. In other words, a typical heavy thunderstorm for the New Orleans metro area.

But I will be watching the storm closely, and will be ready to head for points north if the situation changes.

[SteveSueMac]

Originally Posted by AWCHIEF

No reason to panic.

Ok, but no reason not to take action either ... Good luck!!

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Just saw an interesting on on the news. First story is a couple "stranded in Corpus Christi" because she is set up for a C section on Tuesday. They abandoned the RV out on the coast to wait for the appointment. Next story in the sequence is them doing an air evacuation of the maternity section of one of the Corpus Christi hospitals .... hmmm ....

Bob

[AWCHIEF]

Originally Posted by SteveSueMac

Ok, but no reason not to take action either ... Good luck!!

Any additional required action will be undertaken when necessary and appropriate.

[PKI]

Good Luck to all. Pat

[cwf]

Howdy, y'all!
As you may have learned, Hurricane Harvey arrived late last night on Texas coast.

Appears it ran over our Son and his family's home, a condo complex where is a Maintenance Super and Manager. Of course there are many others affected.. Please, keep all in your prayers.

It has not been announced how you can help if you are able.. I will try to post here when we learn more...

Thanks for all you do for others...

Respectfully submitted..
Channing

[Protagonist]

I read on one of the many hurricane-tracking websites— I think it was Weather Underground, or maybe Category 6— that Corpus Christi never called for mandatory evacuations. Which pretty much meant that anyone stubborn enough or inexperienced enough decided to ride out the storm at home.

Those too stubborn to leave don't get much sympathy from me, because they value their homes and property more than they value their lives anyway. But those who lack experience with hurricanes have my condolences. I still remember when I first moved to the Gulf Coast decades ago and had never experienced the destructiveness of a hurricane firsthand before. Learning my lesson was terrifying.

[slowmover]

I lived in CC until a few years ago. When we moved there I extensively researched the hurricane problem. I never found an advantage in staying. My evac route was towards Laredo and then north on US83 to bypass the Hill Country to the west. I'd seen what happened with Rita and Ike. 12-hrs to get past San Antonio the 140miles from CC.

That said, CC is built on a bluff that is the highest ground from Vera Cruz to Key West. There are areas which won't ever be required to evacuate as storm surge will never reach.

Still have friends and a relative there. And, protagonist, it's possible to be too damned broke to go anywhere.

The eye came in over Rockport, an hour north by road.

Am close to 400-miles north outside Hillsboro and watching same rain as Channing (but I'm at work) pushed up from Gulf.

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by slowmover

That said, CC is built on a bluff that is the highest ground from Vera Cruz to Key West. There are areas which won't ever be required to evacuate as storm surge will never reach.

The highest elevation in Corpus Christi is just under 7 feet above sea level. Not much of a bluff. Even a Cat 1 hurricane can push a storm surge higher than that. What Corpus Christi does have in its favor is Mustang Island, which does its job as a barrier island to cause storm-driven waves (not surge, which isn't a wave) to break offshore.

Storm surge is the single most destructive component of a hurricane, but hurricanes can also spawn tornadoes, plus you've got torrential rains, wind-driven debris, power outages that can last for days with attendant interruptions in service at water treatment plants and/or contamination of drinking water supplies, downed trees and utility poles that can block emergency services from reaching you, reduced effectiveness of police, fire, and ambulance services because they're over-extended trying to deal with the storm's aftermath…

Calling for evacuations based solely on storm surge impacts is short-sighted in my opinion. But I'm not in Civil Defense, so it's not my call to make.

[slowmover]

Doesn't sound to me like you've been to Corpus. My house was 15' above and I was across street from former chief city engineer. I've been over the topo maps. We weren't at the high point.

The two bays are shallow as hell, and the islands of limited help depending on storm damage (new channels cut). . Water gets forced in, but is far slower in retreating. Nueces River flow strength a factor. Gets complicated.

CC has extensive storm water runoff or abatement where land slopes.

As I said, no advantage in staying. It's an insurance set of questions AND time out of the house afterwards. But it won't be flooded. High wind damage, yes. Other city areas will flood as they should never have been built up after Carla and Celia. But they were.

Suffice it to say I'm not happy that those I know have stayed. It is indeed the aftermath to beware.

(P.S. Do they still call it Civil Defense? I'm looking at my car radio, but I don't see the symbols above the numbers. Oh, yeah, it's digital. Hmmm)
.

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by slowmover

Doesn't sound to me like you've been to Corpus.

Once. A couple years ago. I remember eating at Snoopy's Pier, just off the John F. Kennedy Memorial Causeway.

My house was 15' above and I was across street from former chief city engineer. I've been over the topo maps. We weren't at the high point.

I stand corrected about the ground elevations. Multiple online sources cite the 7' value, but I don't know whether they only address the city proper or the entire metro area including suburbs, and those online sources don't indicate where they got that figure. That's the problem with online sources; it's hard to tell if they're authoritative.

Still, even though some neighborhoods may be immune to storm surge, it still surprises me that no mandatory evacuations were called even for low-lying areas. Unless that online information is also in error…

[OTRA15]

FYI Google has a Harvey map up already, and you can toggle on/off various info on the right. ["View all layers"]

http://google.org/crisismap/2017-harvey

This map will likely be updated with storm surge data, rainfall, etc. over the next week or two. Google had a similar map for SuperStorm Sandy, but I don't recall it being available online nearly this quickly.

They also paid for aerial recon flights to show Sandy's damage to the barrier beaches of NJ and Long Island NY, which were incredible to see. With the barrier beach in Texas being similar, future aerial or satellite imagery will be interesting to see.

Prayers for all in Harvey's path. The initial TV reporting from places like Rockport shows some bad damage, but nothing like was forecast IMO. Flooding from all the rain may be significant unfortunately.

Cheers,

Peter

[OTRA15]

Most of the weather stations and airport observations went offline last night, so the data is sketchy, but this text report is a doozy, with the Port Aransas area making the top of the Wind Gust list at 132 MPH at 0942 last night:

http://forecast.weather.gov/product....n=3&glossary=1

Rockport reported 108 MPH, and the television images from Rockport show the damage, with one fatality being reported.

As you can see, the lower part of the list shows that the strongest gusts were confined to a fairly narrow band, probably east of the eye as it traveled north IMO. [The "dangerous quadrant."]

Wikipedia has a page already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurric...ogical_history